Bid to give migrant workers more employment power

Proposals for work permits to be in an employee's name rather than their boss' have been put forward.

Deputy Beatriz Porée said she wanted Justice and Home Affairs Minister Mary Le Hegarat to review and update the government's current policy to give migrant workers more power over their employment.

Porée's proposition also called for rules to stop recruitment fees and related costs for the employment of migrant workers being taken from the workers themselves.

The earliest her proposal will be debated by the States Assembly is 24 March. The BBC has contacted the Government of Jersey for comment.

Porée said the recent court case of deputy Philip Ozouf had brought issues faced by migrant workers to light.

Ozouf was sentenced to 120 hours community service and ordered to pay £5,000 legal costs after breaking the island's immigration law when he employed five Rwandan workers in his launderette and at his home when they did not have the right to do so.

Porée said she felt the current policy had an "imbalance of power".

"My concern is for the small number of employees in the island who are being trapped into workplaces and are not being cared [for] in the manner that it should be for any humanbeing in my view," she said.

"It is very much to readdress the balance and give migrant workers some sort of dignity and ability to actually move away from a bad employer if that situation occurs to them."

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